The FDA has released, as a draft for comment, the study Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products after Implementation of an FDA Product Standard. The study concludes that the illicit trade in tobacco products may be discouraged because the manufacturing “costs for illicit tobacco products might be higher because of economies of scale, and large-scale production difficult to achieve (and easy to detect by enforcement authorities). This might limit how significant illicit trade could ever become.”
In light of the high-speed, sophisticated, and massive illicit cigarette factories which have recently been discovered across Europe, FDA’s conclusion is absurd. In some cases, the factories are operated by slave labor. Illicit cigarette busts can now result in the seizure of tens of millions of cigarettes in a single raid.
The massive production of illicit cigarettes also occurs in factories on both side of the US border with First Nations territories in Canada. Canadian authorities seize tons and tons of illicit tobacco trucked that is from the US and bound for illicit cigarette factories. And, the problems don’t stay north of the border, Canada’s illicit tobacco problem is America’s illicit tobacco problem.
